They're doing an integrated course.
A little confused as to why students at oxford, cabair etc; are able to complete all of their groundschool before commencing any flying ?
It's probably a little bit unfair to blame this curiosity entirely on the CAA.
Integrated courses were intended to be exactly that. Students would learn a little bit in the classrooms than practice it in the air. Then learn a little bit more in the classroom then practice that in the air, an so on.
Students were permitted to start the integrated course without a PPL, because they would do the equivalent of the PPL classroom study and flying before starting the ATPL theory. So it was all reasonably logical.
But the schools found that some of their sponsored students simply could not pass the ATPL Theory. So the money that had been spent on the part of the flying that had already been completed, was wasted when the student dropped off the course. The sponsors were quite naturally not happy with this situation.
So the schools changed the program, putting all of the classroom work at the start. On these modified courses anyone who cannot pass the ATPL theory simply never gets to fly, so very little money is wasted.
At this point the CAA should have refused to approve the modified courses, but they did not have the bottle to do so.
The CAA and the schools still pretend that the integrated courses are a fundamentally superior product, but they are nothing of the sort.